Agent Carolina (topoftheboard) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2016-05-18 10:29:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, agent carolina, yue katou |
Who: Katou & Agent Carolina
When: Monday, May 2nd
Where: Chateau Katou
What: Carolina checks in on Katou and offers to help clean
Warnings: Cursing & cleaning up crime scenes
Status: Complete on posting!
There was very little that Carolina would not do for a friend. She had only managed to make a few close friends in her lifetime, and, additional benefits aside, Kanan was one of them. So when he asked her to check in on his roommate, Katou, before heading to see him in the hospital, Carolina went without question. Maybe a bit of hesitation, but never any questions. She had no idea how injured he was after being jumped by three - Three! Jesus. - hitmen, but she reasoned that the man was not in any critical danger if he was awake and texting her.
It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she had just admitted some of her missions as a Marine had included “handling” a number of people in apparently the same line of work as Kanan. Or that because of her previous involvement, she might not be very high on the list of people he would want to see so soon after a direct attack on his business. Carolina ran a hand down her face. Stop it, Church. She had promised to bring an overnight bag for him and she would do just that. In the meantime, he had trusted her to ensure the safety of the person who had saved his life. Everything else could wait.
The street was quiet when the green station wagon pulled up in front of Chateau Katou. Getting out of the car, Carolina frowned. The big picture window was covered up with cardboard and duct tape and the sun caught small shards of glass in the surrounding grass. Is that...blood? It had not been a week since she had last seen the place and it looked like a hastily cleaned up crime scene. That’s because it is a crime scene. Just not one that could be reported to the police.
Opening the back door, Carolina surveyed the area with deceptively casual eyes. If the hitmen had people providing intel, they might still be around. After a few moments she nodded and turned back to pick up her purse and mostly-empty duffel. She would survey the area before she left, but it did not look like the house was currently being watched. The Beretta in her purse was loaded and within easy reach should that not be the case.
Car locked, the redhead headed up to the front door. Hopefully Katou would be home. Otherwise, she would just have to wait. She really did not want to sit on the doorstep twiddling her thumbs, but she would, if it came to that. Carolina cast her eyes up and down the street, doing one last survey before turning and knocking loudly on the door. “Anyone home?”
Katou had been too busy the other night to worry about much other than the three men who’d been sent after Kanan, and the fact that his boss had managed to get himself pretty fucked up. Katou himself had only sustained one injury - a graze from a bullet on his right arm which he’d rather sloppily bandaged, though really, he wasn’t that concerned.
He hadn’t even noticed that one of his guitars had been shot until the next morning. Luckily, it wasn’t the new guitar his sister had bought him, but it was his old guitar. He had seen the guitar when he was in an old pawn shop for other business, and he’d traded some blow for it. Everyone had come out on top in that transaction. He’d been through a lot with the guitar; he’d even tried a sloppy switch over to make it a left-handed guitar after he’d managed to get his fake left arm from the dreams.
He was pretty sure it was toast now. He had tried restringing it, ignoring the blown out chunks of the neck, but it didn’t sound right anymore and no matter what he tried with the limited tools he had in the house, he wasn’t making it even remotely better.
He was so intent on his guitar that he didn’t even notice anyone coming up the stairs until they knocked on the door, and he started a little, focusing in on the aura. One person, a woman from the voice, alone. None of the goons from the other night were with her, and no one was hiding outside. Still, he should have been more alert. He should have known she was coming as soon as she started walking towards the house. Stupid.
“The hell do you want?” Katou asked, flinging open the door violently. If it was some nosy neighbour wondering about the window or the glass or the commotion, he was hoping to scare them off. Hell, if they were anyone who wanted a glance at the inside of the house - he hadn’t managed to clean up anyone’s blood stains from the floor yet, and there was a lot of them - he hoped they would quickly realize that it wasn’t worth it. Besides, he was pretty pissed about his guitar.
Wincing as she shifted the weight of the duffle on her shoulder, Carolina made sure her right hand was free to reach into her purse if necessary. The sleepy street was still asleep, but that did not mean that the would-be-assassins had not already sent a second team to finish the job. It was unlikely, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Or dead, for that matter.
The sound of the door being opened snapped Carolina’s attention back to the house. Her lips threatened to quirk upward in a smirk at his ‘greeting’. “Hello to you too.” After the night he’d had, she did not blame him one bit for being a growling ball of piss. Hell, she would have bought the kid a drink if she could. She still might, considering the liquor stores at her brother’s place. She highly doubted he would notice a missing bottle or two before she could find time to replace them.
The view from the front door offered a better picture of the ‘crime scene’ than the glass shards on the outside. It looked like a tornado had torn through the living area and tried to bleed the house dry. Experience told her some of those blood stains were far too large for the person to have survived making the puddle in the first place. Consider the count had been his, Katou had even more of a reason to be unhappy at the prospect of nosy visitors getting a peek of what had happened last night. One thing she did not see was evidence that anyone else was in the house. Good. She shifted her weight away from the gun in her purse.
“Kanan sent me.” Carolina stated the obvious. Even though she had stayed at Chateau Katou previously on a few occasions, it was rare that she and Katou would actually see or speak to each other. The kid had made a point of staying out of Kanan’s business where she had been concerned and she had in turn respected Katou enough to keep her nose far away from any of his business. Until this morning. “Thought you could use a hand.” Whether Katou wanted to take that as help cleaning or lessons on using the shotgun in her duffel, she would leave that up to him.
“Did he now?” Katou asked incredulously, eyeing the woman out the door up from top to bottom. Seemed a convenient excuse for someone who knew Kanan was fucked up to use to get entry into his house and to put Katou’s guard down. On the other hand, Kanan was in the hospital, so it would probably make sense for someone to swing by and maybe check on Katou or grab a thing or two for Kanan’s hospital stay. Katou might have only been eighteen, but he could take care of himself just fine. He tried to quash the warm fuzzy feeling in his stomach that Kanan maybe had sent someone to check in on him, because it seemed far more likely that this was the friend of someone from the other night come to get revenge on Katou.
A woman across the street was walking her dog, and glanced over toward the house. “Get in here before people start looking,” he said after a moment’s hesitation, opening the door wide enough for Carolina to walk in.
“Yeah. He did.” Carolina was not sure if she should be insulted or amused by the once-over she received. There was not much to see considering her weapons were in her purse and duffle and not on her person. Sure, the plaid overshirt might have covered a pistol tucked into the waistband of her jeans, but that might send the wrong message. She was here for defense, not offence. Much as she would like to meet and ‘greet’ the assholes who had attacked Kanan, if what he said was correct, the goons were halfway across the Americas by now and out of her immediate reach.
“Thanks.” Slipping past Katou, Carolina headed inside. She set down her bags just inside the main room and surveyed the damage. It’s going to take a lot of peroxide to get out all those bloodstains. She could help with that after she visited Kanan, but first things first. “Any sign that those three might’ve had friends in the area?”
“Not yet,” Katou said, very much on guard now. When Kanan had told Katou about his smuggling, he’d been sure to mention that he hadn’t told anyone else. Katou found it hard to believe that he’d just be telling anyone who’d listen about the three men who’d come for him. “No one’s been skulking about the house or nothing. Pretty sure them and their boss are probably pissing themselves about now.” A fact that Katou was rather proud of - people didn’t scare quite as easily in his dreams - and one that he was almost sure would cause some sort of suspicious reaction if she was one of them. And if not, “I’m thinking of just finishing the old guy off myself. You know, cutting off the head of the snake and all that.” With Kanan’s permission, at least. Katou hadn’t brought it up to him yet; he’d wait until Kanan was feeling a little better. But it did seem like the best course of action, and if his proclamation brought more hired guns to his doorstep, it was better if they did it when Kanan wasn’t around.
“Good.” Carolina nodded. She had found out about Kanan’s occupation less than an hour ago, but she had been sent to the field with less information before. Not too much less, though. Her lips quirked upward at the description Katou gave of the goons. “I heard you had a lot to do with that. Sorry I missed the party.” She never could resist a good fight.
“Really. Just like that, huh?” Whether Katou was being serious or if it was all bravado, Carolina could not help but approve of the plan. The kid also looked to be in good spirits, all things considered. I guess that wasn’t his first count. A jaded thought, considering how young he looked. On the bright side, that meant there was probably not a puddle of vomit amongst the blood that would need cleaning as well. “If you’re going after the boss, I’m going to need to stop and get a few more weapons.” She knelt down and opened the duffle, revealing two shotguns, various types of rope and duct tape, a sheathed machete, several boxes of ammo, an empty messenger bag, and what looked like a Star Wars action figure. When asked to protect someone’s life, you can bet she took the job very seriously.
She picked out the messenger bag and straightened. “I don’t think we’ve ever formally met. I’m Carolina.” Her eyes were smiling, but her face was all business. “I’m your backup. At least until Kanan’s out of the hospital.”
Katou relaxed slightly once Carolina seemed more than okay with the idea. He broke into his first smile of the day, and leaned casually against a nearby wall, his arms folded across his chest. He let out an impressed whistle as she continued to pull weapons out of her bag, though his eyes lit up when he caught sight of the Star Wars figurine. “Oh yeah, definitely think we’re going to need that Star Wars doll,” Katou said, jutting his chin toward it. That more than anything won Katou to her side. It would be a strange thing for another hitman to carry unless they were a giant geek, but considering the fact that Kanan dreamed of being a goddamn Jedi, that would be one hell of a coincidence.
“Katou,” Katou said. “Don’t think I’ll need much backup though. I ain’t planning on making no moves until Kanan gives the goahead. You want a beer or something in the meantime?”
The mention of the Star Wars figurine made Carolina grin. She reached down to pick it up, intending to toss it to Katou so that he could get a better look. “I found it a while back but I haven’t had a chance to give it to him yet. I figured it might cheer Kanan up to know that he has his own action figure. His own comic series too, actually, but I couldn’t sneak those away from my brother’s collection without having to answer too many questions I didn’t feel like answering.” Such as why she had not yet introduced her comic book nerd of a brother to her friend who happened to be an actual jedi. Or at least dreamt about being one.
“I knew you were a smart one.” Carolina would have gone with the kid to try and take out the big boss if that was what he wanted to do, but she doubted that Kanan would have appreciated it very much. She shrugged. She did not doubt the kid could handle himself, but it was always prudent to prepare for the worst case scenario just in case. “Kanan asked, and so ye shall receive. I’d rather not have to use any of these if I don’t have to. If you’d rather I stay instead of check in, I can do that too. I figured I’d take an overnight bag to the hospital in a bit, if you want to throw anything for him in the bag as well.”
As much as she wanted a beer, she was not about to go anywhere armed with alcohol in her system. “I’m fine.” The living room, however, definitely was not. “Do you want any help cleaning up?”
Katou caught the figurine, and then burst out laughing. “Holy shit!” he exclaimed. “It’s actually him! This is fucking awesome.” He admired the figurine a little more before tossing it back to him. “If he don’t get a kick outta it, I’ll take it.” Maybe he should try to get his hands on those comics too. He wondered what exactly they’d be about, but it was beyond cool.
Katou shrugged. “I don’t really got a preference either way,” he said. “If you wanna stay there’s my old room,” he said, nodding toward the sectioned off part of the living room. It had once been a reading nook, but it had been converted into a small bedroom, the bed built into the wall where the nook had been, once Katou moved in. “Or I guess you could use Kanan’s room. He ain’t getting much use outta it right now. But there ain’t no way I’m going to pass up cleaning help. This whole thing has been the biggest fucking pain in the ass I can imagine. I stepped on a goddamn shard of glass this morning.”
Once the action figure was tucked back into the messenger bag, Carolina set it on top of the rest of her things. They were out of the majority of the mess, at least. “As long as you don’t mind having a house guest, I wouldn’t mind a change of scenery for a bit.” She would have to ask Kanan for permission before using his room as a home-away-from-couch, otherwise the little nook did not look too bad. It would give her a good vantage point to watch the entranceway too. “I’ll warn you now that my cooking is limited to what comes from a box or can be delivered.”
Carolina pulled her hair back into a low pony tail. “All right. Let’s get this place cleaned up. If you have a broom I can use, I’ll start sweeping up the glass. In the meantime, you can start putting together some peroxide and detergent mixtures for the blood stains.”
“I can cook,” Katou said with a shrug, seemingly indifferent but the truth was he’d be glad for the company while Kanan was gone. Katou didn’t enjoy spending too much time on his own, though he’d do it without complaint.
He headed to the closet and pulled a broom out from it. “Heads,” he called, and he lobbed it at her. “What exactly do I mix together?” he asked, pulling some of the cleaning bottles out from the closet. “Ain’t there some that’ll like, kill ya if you mix them together?”
“If you want to cook, I’ll buy the food.” And alcohol. Whatever liquor bottles Katou didn’t want or drink she would take back as couch rent for the week. “After we clean up, you can give me a list of what you want from the store and I’ll pick it up on my way back.” Carolina was glad that her presence was so easily accepted, especially under the circumstances. If their situations were reversed, she would have been more likely to put a bullet in a stranger’s head instead of accept his help cleaning up the living room.
“There’s plenty of things that shouldn’t be mixed together.” The smirk was evident in Carolina’s voice as she caught the broom. “No bleach and ammonia. No vinegar. Other than that you’ll probably be safe. Try a thirty percent solution with the peroxide and an old rag or paper towels to start. If that doesn’t work, go for clothes detergent. If that doesn’t work, well… We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.” She started sweeping the glass around the blood stains first so that Katou could start on the stains when he was ready. The broom caught on a thin hole in the floor. Is that… a knife mark? That had to be a pretty big damn knife, considering how wide the hole was. Bullets and knives. Those assholes really pulled out all the stops. She made a note to pick up some wood filler later.
“Cool,” Katou said. “I ain’t gonna say no to free food. ‘Specially when the guy who cuts my paycheques is holed up in the hospital.” There’d been more than once in his dreams when people who he thought were his enemies turned out to be his closest allies. He himself had tried to kill Setsuna twice before he’d assumed the mantle of his protector and champion. It seemed easier to assume the best until he didn’t have a reason to, and he was confident that even if someone could get close enough to kill him, Katou would drag them down to hell with him.
Katou nodded, taking in most of that, a little more confident that he wouldn’t kill them. Ammonia and bleach was the one he’d been thinking of, and he never would have even considered vinegar as a cleaning product. He began to try mixing things together. “So, what’s Kanan to you that you’re up for doing shitty grunt work for him?” Katou asked.
“You’re still going to have to cook the food.” Carolina pointed out. “That’s payment enough in my books.” As long as the end result was better than an MRE, Katou could make whatever the hell he wanted and she’d eat it with a smile. Well, maybe not a smile, but definitely something above a frown. In her experience, both here and the dreams, enemies remained enemies, but that did not mean she could not make a new friend or two. It would help balance out the friends that had unfortunately fallen into the ‘enemy’ category.
She did a second pass over the blood stains with the broom to catch any stray slivers before moving on to the rest of the room. “Kanan is...a good friend.” Carolina figured that was probably a better description than ‘a guy that I’ve been banging on the regular’, as an idiot had phrased it once. It had the benefit of also being true. Kanan was a good friend and had already helped her through more than a few rough days since she arrived in California. She cared about him - about what happened to him - and no amount of cleaning or errand running would change that. “And I wouldn’t call looking after the guy who saved his life ‘grunt work’.”
Katou’s lips quirked knowingly. “Good friends, eh?” he teased, not because she’d really given too much away and more because he was an eighteen year old boy who often had his mind in the gutter.
Katou flushed a little when she mentioned that he’d saved Kanan’s life, and he rubbed his nose with his index finger. “Yeah, well,” was about all Katou could manage with a vaguely self-conscious shrug. He turned his focus back to the task at hand. “You think the blood’s gonna come out of the wood? I think the owner of the house’d kill me if she found out I let someone bleed all over her floors.”
“Yep. Good friends.” Carolina’s eyes crinkled in amusement even as she continued sweeping. If Katou had read between the lines, regardless of the reason, she was not about to deny it. Considering the kid lived with Kanan, she doubted it was much of a secret anyway. For all the secrets the smuggler kept, he was extremely honest and upfront about everything else.
Carolina caught sight of the flush and couldn’t help but smile. Katou was a good kid. The two housemates really suited one another. “Don’t worry, blood is actually pretty easy to remove from treated wood like this. It’s less likely to soak up the blood than, say, a mattress. Just don’t add anything that isn’t cold until it’s all gone.” Creating blood stains was usually what Carolina specialized in, but there had been a few missions where she had to clean up various ‘messes’ as well. Most normal people would be inclined to reach straight for the bleach to clean up a bloodstain, but she knew better. Bleach would not break down the proteins that would show up under a blacklight, and there was no way she was going to let any evidence get tied to either of the two occupants, should the actual police come a calling.
“Yeah, I’ve had some experience with trying to get blood outta mattresses,” Katou muttered. “Think I went through a couple when I was still dreaming.” Thank god that was over. The dreams didn’t stop, not really, but instead playd on a constant loop when he was sleeping. The best dreams he had and the worst, and it was always kind of a grab bag about whether he’d dream of seeing Kira again for the first time after thinking he’d murdered him, or seeing Kira being torn to shreds by Rociel. At least now he was saving money on bedding by not waking up spurting blood every few months. “Glad Kanan sent someone who knows how to get a shitton of blood out of the floors though,” he said, eyeing Carolina up as he finished with the mixture. He was a little curious about how, exactly, Carolina seemed to know these things, and the question was present in his tone, but it wasn’t his business and he wasn’t going to ask. Everything mixed together, he sat down on the floor next to the biggest of the blood stains and began to scrub away.
Carolina had been lucky enough not to wake up bleeding from any wound she had received in the dreams, but she had no idea if that would be true in the future. She could also hear the obvious question in Katou’s voice, but she kept her eyes on the broom, refusing to acknowledge it. It was not any of his business. Just like the reason Katou woke up bleeding into his mattress was none of hers. Carolina sighed. The reason Kanan had been jumped had not been any of her business either, but he had still told her. Trust went both ways.
“I’ve done some...cleaning before. Not enough to make a career of it, but I’ve had to pick up a few tricks in my time. I doubt that crossed Kanan’s mind when he asked me to come here, but hell if it isn’t useful right now.” Carolina admitted after a moment. The glass she had been able to sweep up was in a small pile on one side of the room, ready to be swept up into a dust bin. “How’s that solution working so far?”
“Yeah?” Katou asked, a little intrigued. “Probably glad you didn’t make a career out of it. This fucking sucks. I ain’t never had to do the clean-up before, so I guess my dreams had something going for them.” Maybe he’d only been scrubbing at the blood for maybe a minute, but he was already over it. What did it matter if he had a huge blood stain on the floor anyway? It wasn’t like he ever invited people over who’d care about that kind of thing.
But then, there was the police. And it wasn’t like Kanan was in the most legal of businesses. It was probably better if there wasn’t evidence that Katou’d busted open someone’s skull like it was a watermelon. “It’s working, I think,” he said distastefully. He dipped the brush into the water, turning the water a light shade of pink though Katou knew it would be a deep crimson by the time he was through. “It’s kinda a pain in the ass though. Can’t we just like, burn the whole place down or something?”
“More than glad. I was much better at making the messes, anyway.” The toothy grin on Carolina’s face said it all. Glass pile picked up, she grabbed a few paper towels and went to help with the scrubbing. She was tempted to say that of course cleaning sucked. If it didn’t, no one would have a problem keeping everything organized or need to pay people to clean things for them. If the two assholes that survived had still been in the country, she would be tempted to go and find them to make them clean up their own damn mess at gunpoint. A pity, really.
“It should go faster with two of us working at it.” It looked like the stains were getting lighter, but the water she dipped the towels into was definitely pink. She made a note to change it out soon while Katou was scrubbing. Carolina could not help but laugh at the suggestion of burning the place down. “Sure, that’ll get rid of the blood, but then where’re you two going to sleep at night?”
Katou resisted the urge to comment how making the messes was both easier and more fun than cleaning them up, but it struck him suddenly that saying cleaving assholes in two was fun might raise some eyebrows, even to people who apparently knew their way around the whole homicide game.
“Not fast enough,” Katou sighed. “Don’t make a junkie work, man,” he said, and then smiled a little. No one was making him work - this was his own damn mess in the first place - but complaining incessantly was something that was practically expected of an eighteen-year-old, and Katou was damn good at it. “Anyway, it’s not that hard to find places to sleep once you know how to look for ‘em.”
Considering the mini-arsenal that Carolina had brought, she was in no position to talk about the appropriateness of what she found ‘fun’. Back in Texas, dinner and a trip to the firing range was considered an acceptable activity for a first date. Carefully wringing out the paper towel, she studied the stain in front of her. The blood was coming out, but it would probably take four or five passes to get all of it out. They were going to need a lot more peroxide. She bit back a sigh. Another thing to add to the grocery list.
Katou was complaining, but Carolina noticed that his hands never stopped scrubbing. “You seem pretty put together for a junkie.” Not that she had met many, but none of them had seemed too concerned about the state of the place they were currently crashing in or the people around them when she arrived. Katou did not fit into either of those bills. She set back to work again. “Yeah, but this is a pretty nice place. If worse comes to worst, I bet we could find an area rug to throw over it.”
“Reformed junkie then,” Katou said, an almost pleased note in his voice. He paused scrubbing to laugh, but by the time he started speaking he was scrubbing again. “Shit, do you think I could find one of those badass bear skin rugs? I’ve always wanted one of those things.”
“Sure.” Carolina started to shrug before catching herself. Damn future and their damn healing units. Why couldn’t she have gotten York’s healing unit instead of his lighter? That would have been infinitely more useful and better for her sanity. “You could get a giant one with a zebra print. That’ll fit right in with the decor you’ve got going.” She kept her voice even, letting Katou decide if she was actually being serious or not.
Katou snorted. “You think they make those? Because shit yeah, that sounds perfect.” He grinned at the woman then, giving her nearly all his attention. “You’re alright, Carolina.”
“Oh, I think we can find one somewhere. This city does have a fashion district, after all.” Carolina sat back on her legs, eyes twinkling with amusement. If they did manage to find one, her only regret would be that she would not be able to see the confused look on Kanan’s face when he saw it. Maybe Katou would be willing to sneak her a picture. “You’re not so bad yourself, Katou.”